These shocking images show the slum-like lives of immigrants who passed through New York’s Ellis Island. This photo shows dead bodies piled in an alleyway off Monroe Street following a fire nearby in 1913

Between the years 1900 and 1914, it is believed 5,000 to 10,000 immigrants passed through the station every day.

It was customary for incoming people to queue up for hours to go through medical and legal checks to decide whether they were eligible to enter the country.

Two young girls are pictured protesting against child labour conditions in 1909 – at a time when around a fifth of America’s workforce was under 16

While arrivals slowed from northern and western European countries such as Germany, Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia, an increasing number began pouring in from southern and eastern Europe.

These included Jews fleeing political and economic oppression in czarist Russia and eastern Europe, with 484,000 arriving in 1910 alone.

Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks and Greeks, along with non-Europeans from Syria, Turkey and Armenia, also abandoned their homes in the hope of escaping war, drought, famine and religious persecution for a better life in the New World.

migrant racket mess

SHOCK DISCOVERY

24 suspected illegal immigrants are discovered in the back of a freezer lorry on the M25

HOLIDAY FROM HELL

Couple felt like 'illegal immigrants' in Spain after their passports were removed from jet before take off

It reveals the neighbourhoods occupied by immigrants – known as tenements – in the city’s Lower East Side as well as lower Manhattan – including Chinatown and Little Italy – which quickly became overcrowded.

In this image a beggar sits on the streets of New York with his hand outstretched

In some photographs, dead bodies lie strewn in the street while young children play innocently beside them.

Hine eventually used his pictures to bring about a change to child labour laws in America.

Ellis Island opened to the public in 1976.

Visitors can now take a tour around the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in the restored Main Arrivals Hall and trace their ancestors by looking through millions of immigrant arrival records which were made available in 2001.